Ribbons of Scarlet – TLC Blog Tour

Ribbons of Scarlet

William Morrow Paperbacks – October 1, 2019

*Book Review copy provided by TLC Book Tours & the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

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Hello October! Where did you come from! I feel like this fall is flying by and honestly I can’t wait until Christmas break because graduate school is kicking my butt! However, I’m sticking with my goal to read and make time for myself, which is why I’m excited to share another historical fiction pick with you all.

Thanks to William Morrow Paperbacks and TLC Book Tours for organizing this book tour for Ribbons of Scarlet!

About the book

Ribbons of Scarlet is a timely story of the power of women to start a revolution—and change the world.

In late eighteenth-century France, women do not have a place in politics. But as the tide of revolution rises, women from gilded salons to the streets of Paris decide otherwise—upending a world order that has long oppressed them.

Blue-blooded Sophie de Grouchy believes in democracy, education, and equal rights for women, and marries the only man in Paris who agrees. Emboldened to fight the injustices of King Louis XVI, Sophie aims to prove that an educated populace can govern itself–but one of her students, fruit-seller Louise Audu, is hungrier for bread and vengeance than learning. When the Bastille falls and Louise leads a women’s march to Versailles, the monarchy is forced to bend, but not without a fight. The king’s pious sister Princess Elisabeth takes a stand to defend her brother, spirit her family to safety, and restore the old order, even at the risk of her head.

But when fanatics use the newspapers to twist the revolution’s ideals into a new tyranny, even the women who toppled the monarchy are threatened by the guillotine. Putting her faith in the pen, brilliant political wife Manon Roland tries to write a way out of France’s blood-soaked Reign of Terror while pike-bearing Pauline Leon and steely Charlotte Corday embrace violence as the only way to save the nation. With justice corrupted by revenge, all the women must make impossible choices to survive–unless unlikely heroine and courtesan’s daughter Emilie de Sainte-Amaranthe can sway the man who controls France’s fate: the fearsome Robespierre.

My Thoughts

Overall, I really loved the concept of this book!

First, the French Revolution setting was fantastic and clearly well researched. As a history nerd I absolutely loved that there is a reading list included in the book so that readers can read more works on the revolution. I honestly wish more historical fiction writers included these as I love to see where they drew their inspiration and it creates a friendly bibliography for readers.

Additionally, I loved the vignettes! I thought is was a neat way to write a variety of perspectives on the same event. I would actually be curious to see they format with a more diverse cast of characters. However, I appreciate that class, education, and political ideological differences were included here.

As with any collection readers are going to latch on to different stories or prefer different writers. That’s the only downside of the book for me. I’m not a big reader of short stories and they kind of felt that way to me. Again, I was intrigued by the premise so I wanted to read it but admittedly books with numerous authors can make be turn the other way.

I would highly recommend this book for fans of historical fiction that are also intrigued by this premise or if you need a break from books set in the twentieth century!